


numbers and figures

by raffinit



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/M, Joel and Tess are non-traditional students, or at least Joel is and Tess is just a university student because of the age gap lol, pseudo-college AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-07 01:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8777053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raffinit/pseuds/raffinit
Summary: Happy birthday Anne-Marie you bitch love you long time~





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peppermint_smile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppermint_smile/gifts).



> birthday gift or whatever

He meets her at a cafe; the pretentious kind that’s full of young people sleeved in ink and piercings, and dark makeup or clothes a little too tight. The ones that boast fair trade coffee beans and organic, vegan food choices that makes Joel crave a greasy double cheeseburger and a side of chili cheese fries. He isn’t made for a place like this, but there’s nowhere else to go for a decent cup of coffee, and so the slightly older than most man wanders into the cafe, ignoring the probing, if somewhat vicious stares of the crowd around him.

What’s wrong with his jeans and shirt, anyway? It ain’t dirty, it’s fresh out the laundry, actually -

“Stop fuckin’ staring at the man and serve him, will you, Kieran? You look like a fucking defective.”

He jolts at the voice, blinks when he realizes he’s come to the counter already, and there’s a man blushing under a fedora hat and a nose piercing by the cash register. Joel frowns, glancing around ‘Kieran’, to where the voice had come from, and blinks again when he sees a girl sitting by the counter, looking just about as out of place as he does. 

This ‘Kieran’ fella mumbles something about having his order, and Joel finds enough sense in his mind to ask for a large cup of coffee, black, before his eyes wander back to the young woman watching him with equal if less unapologetic curiosity. He feels his cheeks flare under her gaze; he can’t tell from this distance what color her eyes are, but he knows she’s pretty - much too pretty for him, and he busies himself with rummaging through his jeans pockets for change when Kieran’s tattooed arm appears in front of him with a large to-go cup of ink black coffee. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and does his best to keep his head down and away from the way the woman’s body looks leaning over the counter, or the way her tank top hugs the curve of her body. He turns on his heels, ready to be rid of the probing eyes around him -.

“What’s the rush, Texas?” He freezes against his will, feels the hairs on the back of his neck bristling as his mind rushes to think of something to do - something to  _ say  _ to her as he turns slowly back in the direction of the girl. She’s turned to him now, seated still, but Joel can see the pretty sprinkle of freckles on her high cheekbones, the lopsided and mischievous smirk on her feline mouth. There’s a look in her eyes that maybe frightens and intrigues him, and Joel feels his mouth open, and then close, and the coffee burn almost too hot in his hand. 

“Uh….” He glances to Kieran, perhaps for some kind of reassurance or guidance at how to deal with this woman, but he finds no sympathy in the back of the scrawny barista. 

The woman smiles wider, amused. “Come on, come sit.” She pats the empty bar stool by her side, waves him over. “I don’t bite.” There’s a flash in her eyes and something like a wicked grin on her lips before she spins away, and Joel feels the jolt in his chest and throat. “Unless you want me to.”

_ Well shoot, you might as well take a seat. Who knows what she’ll do to you the next time she sees you. _

\----

“Name’s Tess.” He stares down at the slender hand outstretched by his chest, blinking a moment before he encases it with his own, larger, coarser hand. She’s got a mighty grip for a woman her size, but her hands are soft, her fingers slender - a hidden strength that surprises Joel into a deeper state of speechlessness when she pulls her hand back maybe a second slower than necessary. 

Tess tilts her head at him. “What’s the matter, Tex? Cat got your tongue?” she teases him, and finally the man remembers his manners - his Mama’d kick him in the teeth if she ever knew he was being this rude. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and with a quiet clearing of his throat, he slips into the seat beside her, a sheepish grin on his face. “Uh - Joel. My name’s Joel.” He reaches out again - pulls back awkwardly when he realizes that they’ve only just shook hands, and slips his nervously sweating hand back into his jacket pocket. The burn in his cheeks almost hurts, but Tess seems to be unfazed by it; she smiles at him instead. 

“What brings you to this part of the Midwest, Joel?” She sips her coffee; he’s more intrigued in the way she licks the corner of her mouth after than what she’s drinking.

He shrugs his shoulders, toys with the rim of his own coffee - the one that smells vaguely like old socks? Maybe all fair trade coffees smell like dirty socks, he doesn’t know, doesn’t care. “Closest place to my brother,” he tells her, and for the life of him, he can’t understand why he just wants to tell her about Tommy and the little ranch his little brother had bought with his new wife, and how he wants to be near his family, especially his new baby niece. “Figured I might as well come around, see if the university wouldn’t mind havin’ an old man sittin’ in on their classes.”

Tess grins at him, asks him questions he patiently answers, and very suddenly Joel can’t find the energy to care about the youth around them. She has the most melodic and infectious laugh he’s ever heard, and the most interesting gleam in her eyes when she speaks. She’s just a little older than the rest of them too; not anywhere near his age, but he can reconcile the fact that she isn’t fresh out of high school either. 

“I just took a little while to get to where I had to be,” she shrugs, and it’s only then that Joel realizes that their coffees are long gone; the crowd has dwindled with the setting sun. They’ve been sitting here for hours. Strange, he thinks. Didn’t feel like hours. 

Eventually Kieran begins to pointedly stack the chairs and wipe down the counter, and Tess rolls her eyes at the man, even if Joel wants to scare the pants off of the man-child for being a dick. She tosses their coffee cups as he holds the door open for her, blushes when Tess teases him for it. 

“Where you headed?” he asks her, when they’re outside in the chilly evening. He pulls at the collar of his jacket as Tess lights a cigarette; he watches almost mesmerized at the way the thin white wisps like milk come bleeding out of her throat.

She points vaguely with the smoking stick, in the direction of the fading light. “Wherever the light takes me.” She smirks at him.

Joel chortles. “You always this poetic?” he rags at her, and Tess giggles in her throat as she walks with him; they have no idea where they’re going, but it seems like they don’t care. They’re going in the opposite direction of the light, and Joel remarks about this to her, but Tess shrugs, taps the ash from her cigarette. 

“I’ll go where you go,” she says simply, and dashes across the street before a honking car. Joel swears as he chases after her, holding up an apologetic hand when the driver sticks his head out to throw a flurry of curses at Tess, and grasps the woman’s arm when she give him the finger right back.

“What in the hell, Tess?” He doesn’t let go of her quite yet, not even here on the sidewalk, safe and untouched by speeding cars and trucks, and Tess tilts her head up at him, smirks at him in the most infuriatingly enigmatic way. 

She laughs, touches his face; it stuns Joel to feel her fingers on his cheek. “You worry too much, Tex,” she tells him softly, and slips her hand down to his, brushes the pulse on his wrist before twining their fingers. “C’mon.” She tugs him, he follows her blindly, gripping tight at the slender fingers between his. 

“I bet you’ve never seen stars like these.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they swap

“I’m tellin’ ya, Tess, if you don’t quit shakin’ the damn desk, I’mma kick you.”

The girl scowls at the man, as much as she can without letting her eyes wander from the glaringly bright screen of her laptop; she ends up sparing him a rather watery-eyed glare for a moment, if only to give her burning eyes a reprieve from the jumble of words in front of her. “Do  _ you  _ want to write this paper for me?” she snaps at him, and Joel glares at her darkly from over the messy sprawl of books and papers and emptied cans of energy drinks crushed in Joel’s bear-like grip. “S’not my fault I got stuck with shitty groupmates. And quit mumbling so damn loud, Tex - I swear to you, people think you’re psychotic the way you look like you wanna tear that trigonometry book in half.”

Joel growls at her, scrubbing at his face viciously in some desperately hopeless attempt of getting the sick feeling of numbers off his mind, leaning back finally in defeat as Tess watches him over the screen of her computer still. “Damn it, Tess,” he sighs, and the girl feels a dig in her chest at how weary the man looks. Even with the thick scruff of his beard (which in itself is testament to how many nights they’ve spent sleeping in the library together, mashed together in a pile of drooling, snoring, limp bodies buried under books and coats), Tess can see the hollow of his cheeks, the gaunt and haunted look on his face. It doesn’t help the way people walk a mile around the man now, surly and bearlike and mostly a hair-trigger away from ripping the roots of a tree from the ground maybe. 

It’s only by Tess’ cajoling; the way she wraps her thin arms around his shoulder or arm and pulls him away from people he thinks are staring, and the way she shoves food at him when he won’t eat, or the way she curls onto his chest when they collapse in the corner of a bookshelf somewhere. She keeps him breathing, keeps him thinking - keeps him wanting to rip his hair out when she shakes her damn leg under the table. 

She abandons her paper much too willingly, rises out of the cramped wooden chair and unfolds her own aching bones from it to go to him. It’s nothing of a distance; five steps? He’s sitting across from her, and she goes to him anyway - finds her seat on his lap as easily as she does in her sleep. As cranky as he is, Joel pushes his seat back for her anyway, wraps his arm around her narrow waist and holds her to his chest when she cups his chin, strokes his cheek gently. Her low, murmuring voice that lowers the tension of his burly shoulders. “You okay, big guy?”

He cracks an eye open, stares up at the girl peering worriedly down into his face; he sees the same signs in her face - she doesn’t eat now, because her food becomes his when she shoves it into his beard and demands that he eat. The deep sink of her cheeks or the dark bags of her eyes because Tess always wakes first, is the one to pinch or punch him awake when they’re late for classes and finals, and is the one to sprint from one end of the building to the other with him to get to the right rooms. 

She hovers over him, and he finds the energy in himself to smile for her, as he always does. “M’fine,” he mumbles, and his large, calloused hand finds hers where it rests on his cheek, and he squeezes them gently, slips his fingers between hers and pulls her hand off his face. He kisses her palm gently, mostly it’s just the bristles of his beard scratching her palm, and Tess thinks it’s about time she gives him a trim. Tired, hazel green eyes smile at her, a crooked little smirk from the corner of his smug mouth lifts some worry from her shoulders, and Tess finds herself smirking back when she feels Joel’s voice thrumming in his chest against her. “Y’wanna switch for a bit?”

“God yes,” she groans, and makes to slide off his lap, only to find Joel’s arm locked tight around her waist. She arches a brow at the man, amused and somewhat wary at the way he’s smirking at her; there’s another light in his eyes now - the cheeky bastard. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Texas?”

He shrugs, drawing her back into his lap, leaning forward to pull her computer over to his side of the table. “Y’don’t gotta sit so far away from me if we’re switchin’,” he drawls, and coaxes Tess’ thighs to straddle his lap - he is now her personal (and much more comfortable) chair. “Sit around for a bit. Warm me up.” He grins when she scoffs at him, and he doesn’t need to see her face to know that Tess is rolling her eyes at him, but she makes no move to leave him, and Joel is content with that. 

So they sit, Tess in his lap, and Joel wrapped around her; she uses the side of his face and shoulders like a desk to finish the rest of his trig homework, and he hunches over her body and laptop to finish her paper for her. The next morning, after they’ve untangled themselves and made it to class maybe a minute or two late, they hand in their papers. There’s a knowing look on both of their professors’ faces when they grade the work of the pair, and when Tess and Joel get their grades back, they find a note in the corner in bright red -

‘ _ Please send my regards and praise to your partner for the stellar work. Try not to make it so obvious next time.’ _


End file.
